Sparkling Cyanide
Dust-jacket illustration of the US (true first) edition. See Publication history (below) for UK first edition jacket image.
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| Author | Agatha Christie |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime novel |
| Publisher | Dodd, Mead and Company |
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Publication date
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February 1945 |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 209 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | Death Comes as the End |
| Followed by | The Hollow |
Sparkling Cyanide is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie and first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in February 1945 under the title of Remembered Death and in UK by the Collins Crime Club in the December of the same year under Christie's original title. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at eight shillings and sixpence (8/6 – 42½p).
The novel features the recurring character of Colonel Race for his last appearance to solve the mysterious deaths of a married couple, exactly one year apart. The plot of this novel expands the plot of a short story, Yellow Iris.
One year earlier on 2 November, seven people sat down to dinner at the restaurant "Luxembourg". One, Rosemary Barton, never got up. The coroner ruled her death suicide due to post-flu depression. Six months later, her husband George receives anonymous letters saying that Rosemary was murdered. George investigates and decides to repeat the dinner at the same restaurant, with the same guests, plus an actress who looks like his late wife meant to arrive late and startle out a confession. The actress does not arrive and George dies at the table – poisoned, like his wife, by cyanide in his champagne. His death might have been judged as suicide, but George shared his concerns and some of his plan with his friend Colonel Race.
As per their uncle's will, if Rosemary died childless her inherited fortune passed to her younger sister Iris, now a wealthy girl. If Iris dies unmarried, the money would pass to her only relative, her aunt Lucilla Drake. Mrs. Drake is a decent person but has a rotter of a son, Victor. During the investigation it becomes clear that the intended victim was Iris. Colonel Race and Iris's suitor, Anthony Browne, realise that Ruth Lessing, George's trusted secretary, had fallen for Victor a year earlier.
The wrong person dies because of Iris's evening bag and the toast to her, the conjuring trick that saves her life. After the entertainment, George proposes a toast to Iris, when all sip champagne except her, being toasted. When the group leaves the table to dance, Iris drops her bag; a young waiter, retrieving it, misplaces it at the seat adjacent hers. When the group returns to the table, Iris sits one seat askew due to the misplaced bag. George sits at Iris's original seat and drinks the poisoned champagne. When this plot fails, Ruth attempts to run Iris over with a car. Colonel Race, together with the police and Anthony Browne, unravel the truth in time to save Iris from Ruth. Her last attempt at killing Iris is to knock her unconscious in her bedroom, then turn on the fireplace gas, and leave the house. Anthony and Colonel Race rescue Iris in the nick of time.
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